Customers who call a toll free number while all available customer agents are busy answering other calls will be put in a queue to wait for the next available customer agent. A toll free number is a telephone number used by a calling party to call a called party and the called party pays for the cost of the phone call. While they are waiting in queue, the network plays pre-recorded announcements repeatedly to the calling customers. These customers can become impatient due to the monotonous contents of these announcements. When they abandon the call, they are adding higher costs to retail expenses in the form of uncompleted calls and potential customer dissatisfaction.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for enabling customized and selectable network announcements in packet-switched networks, e.g., VoIP networks.